This week’s parliamentary moves on
the peace tax campaign are just one aspect of the battle to allow people to
choose how their fiscal dues are spent according to conscience. Peter
Stanford reports.

Every adult in this country is paying, on average, over £8 a week towards
the military budget. Many — perhaps the majority — would consider this an
acceptable financial burden to defend these islands. However, a small but
growing group hold that their taxes should not be used for a purpose they
consider immoral, and are prepared to go to prison for their beliefs.

The similarities between the Peace Tax Campaign and the conscientious
objectors of 60 years ago are obvious.
PTC describe
the 13.6 per cent of our tax burden which goes on defence as “military
conscription in financial terms.” They argue that since the right to refuse
to fight was recognised in law as long ago as
1916, a similar conscience clause should now
apply to taxation.

To that end the
PTC was
founded in 1977, and it reached another landmark
in its campaign to make the majority recognise the rights and beliefs of the
minority this week with the tabling
of an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling on the Government to
establish a peace building fund with money diverted by tax objectors.

Alice Mahon, newly-elected Labour
MP for
Halifax, is behind this latest move. Other motions have been placed before
parliament in recent years (by Catholic
MP Dennis
Canavan amongst others), using time-honoured procedural devices to draw
attention to the peace tax campaign, but Ms Mahon has gone further than
previously in suggesting a use to which the diverted cash could be used.

Rather than stockpile weapons of destruction, she would like to see a fund
which would “break down barriers of race and culture.” Hence the money could
be used to promote inter-communal exchanges, east-west visits for ordinary
people — “not simply talented sportsmen” but representatives of the
community. Alice Mahon sees the fundamental principle at stake as “giving
people a choice on how their money is spent.” The campaign may still have a
long way to go, but she can see an end in sight in terms of stages — perhaps
allowing conscientious objection in fiscal terms to nuclear weapons first,
and then extending it to all armaments.

She is aware of the argument that would see such a tax concession, allowing
people to make a choice on military matters, as the thin end of the wedge.
Would Catholics then be able to divert that part of their taxes that went
into
NHS
coffers to pay for the free distribution of contraceptives to women? Or
pro-lifers that part of their fiscal dues that fund
NHS
abortions?

For Alice Mahon the military argument is a “much larger issue” than either of
these two examples, and hence more fundamental to the sound running of a
democracy.

If Ms Mahon and the five other newly-elected Labour
MPs who
have signed the motion are taking parliamentary action to further their
cause, others have been more practical. The Peace Tax Campaign has long been
associated with the Quakers whose pacifist stance first clashed with state
financial policy as long ago as the seventeenth century in Pennsylvania.

However, more recent recruits have been the Fellowship of Reconciliation,
Bishop Victor Guazzelli, auxiliary in Westminster, the Welsh Presbyterian
Church, and political parties — Plaid Cymru and the Greens — as well as
individual
MPs from
all sides of the House of Commons.

Refusing to pay tax on moral grounds is essentially a personal protest. It is
presently only open to those who actually earn a wage large enough to warrant
income tax, and in practical terms to those who are self-employed or deal
with their own tax matters. The reason for this latter qualification is that
if a group of workers, or even an individual worker employed by a company,
wants to stop paying a percentage of his or her taxes, it is the employer — who is responsible for
PAYE
contributions — that will be punished by the Inland Revenue.

One outstanding case of an individual refusing to pay the estimated 13.6 per
cent of his taxes that goes to the military budget was that of Quaker Arthur
Windsor. On March 5 1986 he was sent to
prison for failing to comply with a court order to pay the sum in tax due.
Since it was a civil crime Mr Windsor was eligible for no remission, and
served his full sentence. On the day of Mr Windsor’s release, Dennis Canavan
introduced the
PTC’s first
parliamentary procedural device.

And Mr Windsor, who is now being forced to pay off his outstanding debt to
the revenue by deductions at source from his state pension, was not alone. To
date at least 25 war tax resisters, as they refer to themselves, have been
taken to court. Yet still a legal right has not been established although one
case went as far as the European Commission for Human Rights which ruled that
fiscal policy lay without its jurisdiction.

And it is not only individuals who have risked financial loss for their
beliefs. Straight Lines Ltd,
a jewellery business in Powys in Wales, was taken to Wrexham court in
November 1985 for failing to pay 13.6 per
cent of PAYE
contributions on its seven employees and 30 outworkers. Like many other
protestors it deducted that amount and sent a separate cheque to the revenue
made out to the Overseas Development Administration.

The court ruled against director Martin Philips who described the action as a
personal act which he took on behalf of all those who did not wish to put
their employers in an embarrassing situation, but who agreed with the
PTC.

Two further court actions by the Inland Revenue followed, and finally in
spring of last year the bailiffs came to
take assets from Straight Lines to meet the shortfall. After three visits, a
till was forced and the tax man satisfied.

Martin Philips has not gone on with his protest, although he does not rule
out the possibility at a later date. His debts to the Inland Revenue meant
that he received bad listings with credit journals and companies, and
consequently his business suffered. He has “no regrets,” but acknowledges that
“Straight Lines undoubtedly took a hammering because of it.”

At present there are 3,500 members of the Peace Tax Campaign, but support for
it is growing, particularly amongst church bodies and groups. Alice Mahon’s
early day motion may never be debated in the chamber, but supporters like
Martin Philips and Arthur Windsor will not give up, just as conscientious
objectors had to endure vilification and personal loss before their moral
conviction was finally recognised in law.

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